


The Rock 'n' Roll Album

by mrswinstonmccartney



Category: The Beatles (Band)
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-16
Updated: 2021-02-16
Packaged: 2021-03-17 19:14:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 16,202
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29476821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mrswinstonmccartney/pseuds/mrswinstonmccartney
Summary: In 1974 in LA, after a visit with Paul and Linda, John puts on and old record, and smokes in bed listening, bitter and nostalgic, to the compilation of old favorites Paul put together for him for an anniversary gift years ago.Each chapter after the first one (the introduction) corresponds with a song from John's 1975 album, Rock'n'Roll.
Relationships: John Lennon/May Pang, John Lennon/Paul McCartney, John Lennon/Yoko Ono, Linda McCartney/Paul McCartney
Comments: 14
Kudos: 22





	1. Chapter 1

John let the cigarette ash pile up on the floor beside the bed. Paul had always hated when he did that. “It’s someone’s job to clean that, y’know, John,” he would chide as they’d lain in one hotel or another. John would usually just smile and change the subject. Paul would sweep up the pile as best he could before they left, and sometimes he’d leave a note of apology and a crisp twenty-pounder for the maids. Paul was always annoyingly thoughtful like that. More considerate of strangers’ feelings than he’d ever been of John’s.

Another tap at the door. “John, love.” It was May, asking him yet again to move his ass out of bed, to unlock the door and come alive. Paul used to call him John love. Used to drag him out of bed to write or record. But it had been different coming from Paul. Everything was. It had been three days now -- or was it only two -- since Paul and Linda had left LA, and it had been three days -- or two -- since John had bothered to get out of bed. He took another drag on his cigarette, which was much shorter than it should have been, and shook his head. He should be through with this kind of thing by now, shouldn’t he? At thirty-four? And yet here he was, pouting just like the eighteen-year-old John had, when Mimi would get fed-up, and rightly so, with their ruckus, and send Paul -- that dirty Irish Speke boy -- away for a few days. But it wasn’t Mimi who had sent Paul away this time. It wasn’t Yoko. Certainly not May. The naive young girl who loved to see Lennon and McCartney together would never dream of it. Even Linda wasn’t to blame, no matter how much John wanted her to be. No, this time, Paul had left all on his own. 

May knocked, insisting. “John, I’m getting worried. Yoko’ll have me skinned if she thinks I let you kill yourself in there.” She was teasing, John knew, trying to keep the mood light because she was scared. He knew May loved him, was more than just some glorified babysitter, and he loved her too, in his way. 

But not right now. He didn’t have the energy for it. “I’m fine, May, fuck off.” The guilt set in the minute he let the words slip between his teeth. He swung himself out of bed, blurs of black overtaking his vision as his body stood vertical for the first time in a long time. Then he walked across the room and opened the door. May’s young, un-creased eyes were red behind her over-large glasses. 

John sighed and took her hand. “Just gimme a few more hours to get my head straight.” He rolled his eyes at himself. “And then let’s see what’s on telly. Spend the night on the couch, you and me.”  
May pinched her lips together in a tight smile. “Actually, I was thinking we could go out. It’s better when you’re depressed to--”

“I’m not bloody depressed, May.”

She looked at him with raised eyebrows. 

John sighed. It was so different living with May than it had been with Yoko. Living with someone who wasn’t hooked on junk. Who didn’t even drink for fuck’s sake. And she wasn’t prissy about it, she was just smart. A smart kid. Maybe going out would do him some good. He put a hand to her cheek. It was sticky with recently dried tears. “Alright. We’ll go out, then. But in a few.”  
May nodded. John kissed her, then stepped back through the doorway to their bedroom, shutting the door slowly behind him. Dread washed over him as soon as he was alone again. The last thing he wanted was to go out. And who knew what May might want to do. Might want to go to a disco or something stupid like that. There would be people there, to stare at him, to ask each other, “Why isn’t he with Yoko?” and to mutter, “He hasn’t put out anything good in a while. It’s cause he’s always stoned.”

Well, they were wrong. Walls and Bridges was bloody brilliant. Even Paul had said so. Not that John needed Paul to tell him his music was good. Music. That was what he needed. He popped what Brian used to call a “downer,” and went to get a record. Band on the Run sat at the top of his stack of recents. It was bloody brilliant, too, but it made him angry to look at it just now. He wanted to chuck it across the room. But he wouldn’t. He let out a dark chuckle. If he broke it, he’d only go out and buy a new one, and he couldn't let himself boost Paul's record sales with his tantrums. He set the album aside and began rifling through his collection, growing more violent and impatient the deeper he dug. Nothing was right. Nothing he wanted to listen to right now. Nothing that wouldn’t make him think of Paul. 

Then, in all his thoughtless sifting of records, a loud tearing sound. A piece of plain brown paper fluttered to the floor. John picked it up. It smelled old. There were creases across it. On the torn edge were written two letters -- an “O” and an “N”. John knew that handwriting. How had that record got here? All the way to LA? He’d brought it to New York in seventy-one, he remembered that much. But he’d thought he’d left it at the Dakota. Pinching the torn bit of paper, John stood and retrieved the rest from the shelf. A plain brown paper cover, now torn, hung precariously from the shelf, exposing a well-worn bit of vinyl. He pulled the record from its place, a strange remorse pulling at him for tearing its unremarkable cover. He put the torn bit next to the rest, and revealed the simple message, “For John,” written in Paul’s A-level handwriting.

Careful, guarded Paul. That’s all he’d dared write on it. But in person, when he’d given it to him eons ago in sixty-seven, when everything was right between them, it had come with a whisper in a velvet deep voice. “Happy anniversary, baby. I love you.” Seven years, it had been, since they’d become a couple. Little did they know at the time they’d only last eight. Eight years as a couple, from sixty to sixty-eight. If you counted the years they’d been just friends, both before and after, it was a full thirteen. Then with the years since the divorce, the total tally came to seventeen. Seventeen years, and never once had Paul dared to say those three words, not unless they were completely and totally alone. And even then, it had always been rare. The coward.

Without a clue as to why he was doing it -- maybe it was the downer pill, dulling his anger or his judgement a bit -- he put the record on. A collection of their oldest favorites, from early days together, chock full of memories, compiled for him by Paul.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading this! It's my first fic, and the support has been great.


	2. Be Bop a Lula

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John remembers the night Paul gave him the record

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This goes along with the first track on John's album, and/or with Gene Vincent's original Be Bop a Lula. Whichever you prefer. I like both. It might also be fun to listen to Come Go With Me before, after, or while you read this.  
> Thanks so much for reading!

Be Bop a Lula  
Paul always said the first song he’d heard John play was Come Go With Me, but it wasn’t. Paul had a selective memory, with that story as with every story. He latched on to a feeling, and then the facts flew away. Everything had to pile together to justify that one core emotion. For whatever reason, Paul liked the idea that John had forgotten the lyrics, and especially that John had replaced them with some ridiculous line about penitentiaries.

In those rare moments when John had felt sure of Paul’s love for him, he told himself Paul liked the story that way because the John that lived in that memory was both inventive and rebellious, quick on his feet and cocky. Most times, though, he thought Paul liked that story because it showed John messing up, John needing Paul to go backstage and tell him the right lyrics, tune his guitar for him, inform him that he was playing banjo chords.

But no, no matter what reasons Paul had for latching onto the Come Go With Me story, John knew it was the wrong one. They’d fought over the memory many times in bed. Not seriously. Not like the fights they had which too often started with John’s abandoned-child jealousy and ended with Paul’s damned working-class shell. No, the fights over which song it had been at that garden fete in fifty-seven were playful fights which started with wrestling and all-too-often ended in ejaculation. 

And so, when John had put on the record for the first time, he didn’t make it past Gene Vincent’s bog-echoed “wwwweeellll….” before he had thrown himself on a giggling mustached Paul, pelting his neck with merciless lips. After the laughter had spiraled into moans, Paul, who always found it difficult to relinquish control--in the studio, in the car, even when he and John were alone together like this--grabbed John’s neck and turned his head to the side. Paul’s mustache tickled John’s ear and sent a shiver down his spine when he whispered, “You’re right, Johnny. And I trust you. Have me any way you want, darling.”

John pulled back and looked into his partner’s eyes, marveling that Paul had said exactly what he’d needed. And Paul had been true to his word, that night, putting himself fully in John’s adoring hands.


	3. Stand By Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John remembers jamming with Paul a few nights ago

This song was the one they’d been playing together the night before Paul left him. What was it, three nights ago now? Two? John guessed he couldn’t really call it playing. They were too hammered to call it that. Jamming, then. Standing so close together like they used to. Ignoring the rolling tape, ignoring the others they were supposedly playing with. For once, Paul had even ignored Linda. John was happier than he’d been in years. It was like the rooftop. A little flash of what once was between them. And looking across the microphone at Paul, John had seen that same ecstasy in his old partner’s beautiful, expressive eyes. 

Paul had picked the song, calling out to the group in general in an off-hand, carelessly McCharmly voice, “D’you know Stand by Me, everybody?” There was an eager affirmative, and Paul had turned, eyebrows raised, to John. “John?” Looking for all the world as though this was a genuine question. As though he didn’t remember the countless car rides to the studio spent screaming the song, as though he didn’t know it had become one of many mantra-songs for their relationship. 

Glare-smiling back, John had managed, “Stand on me, right.” 

Paul had shaken his head and laughed, and then swung them all in with the first, “dum dum, du du dum, dum,” on his base. And just like that, it could have been 1961 for all John knew. There was nothing between them, no lawsuit, no divorce, nothing but a mic. He belted out the first words, right down Paul’s throat, and his partner responded with that erotic thing only Paul’s voice could do. They’d gone at it for far longer than the song really lasted, taking turns screaming their want at each other, then singing in unison, not needing to stare at each other's lips for timing, but doing it anyway. That gorgeous Macca voice, pressed so tight against his own, wrapping everything around them in a mythical glow, Paul barely hiding what would have been a broad grin, leaning in closer to John, close enough that their wrists bumped as they played. John couldn’t help it. When they let the song wind down, still perfectly in sink, both finishing at the same time, John whispered to Paul, walking him away from the mic, “Come back to me, darling.” He glanced at Linda. “Leave . . . leave Wings. We’ll be -- join up with me again.”

Paul bit his lip. He glanced at Linda too, but it wasn’t a furtive look to check if she was busy. It was full of love. Real love. When his eyes met John’s again, they came with a small, sad smile -- almost fatherly -- and Paul said the same words he’d said to John all those years ago in Woolton, the first time John had asked him to join his group. “I’ll think about it.” Then, drink in hand, he’d clapped John’s shoulder and turned back toward his waving wife. 

Well, he’d think about it. That was something. Something good. That had ended up as a yes, had ended up as the bloody Beatles last time. John allowed himself a smile as he watched Paul’s stupid mullet start to walk away.   
But then Paul had stopped. The mullet shook. 

John’s stomach dropped. 

Paul turned back around, and the smile had been replaced by pursed lips and a stiff tone. Not unkind, but firm. Again, fatherly. “Y’know, John, I’ve got a pretty good thing going, right now. With Wings, y’know. With Lin. We’ve already done me joining your group. We did that one for thirteen years. Now it’s your turn.” 

John felt a sneer pulling at the corner of his mouth, and he opened it to toss back something snide at Paul. 

“I know you think I’m putting you on, John, but I’m not. I would love to have you, love to play with you again more than anything. But I can’t lose what I’ve got.” He looked over at Linda again. The pretty blonde woman had struck up a conversation with whoever it was who’d been drumming. “I wouldn’t be around if it weren’t for her. She stuck by me. And I’ve got to stick by her. I love her, John.”

Ugly emotions rose up. Guilt, that he’d driven his friend that close to the edge, that he had been nowhere to be found when Paul had needed him. Jealousy, angry jealousy that the admission of love came so easily for Paul when it came to Linda. “Oh, good old dependable McCartney. Well good luck writing your lift tunes and middle-class lyrics, Paul. Because you wouldn’t catch my corpse joining Wings. I had enough of little miss bossy McCartney in the Beatles, thank you very much, and that was my fucking group.”

Paul shook his head as he slowly backed away, a disbelieving smile growing on his face. “Your group, your group. Will you never grow up, John?” He laughed. “And me? Middle class? I’ll have to tell Mimi, maybe then she’ll let me in through the front door.” He turned around and began to stride quickly toward Linda and her group of friends. “Fun playing with you, Johnny,” he called over his shoulder.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This goes with the second track from the album, or the one by Ben E. King


	4. Rip it Up/Ready Teddy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Little Richard's voice reminds John of the night in Hamburg, when he first realized Paul was in love with him.

"Well it’s Saturday night and I just got paid!” Little Richard’s voice tore into the room, and John’s drug-addled brain had him momentarily convinced Paul had come back. No one, not even the man himself, did a better Little Richard than Paul McCartney. That had always been the case. John laughed to himself, thinking of one particular memory that sealed that fact forever. It had been their first trip to Hamburg, the first time any of them had left the UK, Paul’s first time living away from home. Jim had been hesitant to let his son go. He'd only been convinced when they’d told him Paul would be making fifteen quid a week, much more money than Jim himself ever had. “Can’t say no to that amount of money, can I? Would be criminal, taking that away,” he’d sighed, not at all happy. And he'd been right to be worried.

Hamburg was a disgusting and violent place. A bouncer held John’s head down and pissed over it. Pete was the first, but certainly not the last, of the boys to get sick after a round with a club girl. Their squalid room above the theater was cramped, lightless, moldy, and lacking any form of water facilities. They soon learned that fifteen quid a week had been a bald-faced lie. Fifteen a week paid for their so-called room and board at the Kaiserkeller and nothing else. So they played their eight-hour concerts running on beer, prellies, and the occasional bowl of cornflakes. When the raving German teds hurled coins a them, laughing when they hit their targets with a satisfying clunk, the boys were thrilled. They grinned, “danka mister,” and tucked the coins away to be spent on real food. 

It should have been hell, really. Stu and Pete hated it. Pete because playing really was just a job for him. Stu for the same reason along with the fact that he’d never gone without anything in his life. John was the same as Stu in that the hunger was new to him, the washing himself in the public loo, but being on stage with his best mates made it worth it. George, though he’d grown up poorer than all of them, had lived under a mother who knew how to feed her kids well on nothing, so he was always whining about food. Paul was different. It was obvious he got more buzz than all the other four combined from playing on stage, and though he sometimes grimaced at the stench in their little room, the only complaint he ever voiced was about the money. 

“Me da can never know,” he said, glaring them all down, when they’d first found out what the promised fifteen quid had really meant. “He has to think I’ve made money playing. And good money. Got it?”  
Stu rolled his eyes. “As if fifteen quid was good money in the first place.”

Paul reddened.

John shot Stu a look. 

“Anyway,” Paul pushed on, avoiding Stu’s eyes now. “Jim Mac asks any one of you, we made fifteen a week, and then they took it from us at the border security stop.” 

“Right,” said George. “That goes for my parents too.” 

And so, Paul’s lie had become the official story. Until an opportunity came. 

At the end of one of their sets, a man in a suit appeared where John was laughing at something Stu had just said. He was wealthy enough that, though he retained a classy german accent, he spoke perfect English, which was, in itself, a welcome change from the few words the owner of the Keiserkeller knew. “Hello, boys, how do you do?”

Stu raised his eyebrows. “Hello, sir. What can we do for you?”

“Nah, mate. It’s quitting time,” John cut in before the man could answer. “If you’ve got a request, save it.”

“Actually, I do have a request, and I think you’ll want to hear it.”

“What’s this?” Paul came striding across the stage where he’d been helping George wrap chords.

“I own the top ten club down the street,” the man exclaimed.

John instantly wished he’d held his tongue.

Paul wiped a bit of black from his hand onto his pants and extended it to the man. “Paul McCartney, pleasure to meet you, mister.”

John shared a look with Stu and they both bit their lips to keep from snorting with laughter. 

But the man took Paul’s eager-pleaser hand willingly and shook. “I’d like to offer you boys a slot at my club. I pay wages in addition to offering a room for the group, and my club is very well rated. It would do the group’s reputation well to be on the bill at the top ten club.”

The explanation was unnecessary. Everyone knew about the top ten club.

“Top ten, did he say?” George asked, coming over.

The man nodded. “Now, what was the group’s name again?”

They all chorused, even Pete, “The Beatles,” in unison, as though they’d rehearsed it. 

Backstage the next day, at the top ten club, their hair all slicked back with vaseline, the collars turned up on their leather jackets, the Beatles waited. Pete looked bored, as usual, twiddling his thumbs, his drums untouched beside him. George smoked a ciggie and chewed gum at the same time. Stu and John were deep in conversation, with John reassuring Stu that no one would know he couldn’t really play. He’d faked it this far, hadn’t he? Paul bustled around, tuning and retuning everyone’s instruments, mouthing song lyrics. Suddenly, they all stopped what they were doing as their ears picked up something unexpected from the group before them.   
The song was Little Richard’s Rip it Up, but whoever was singing it wasn’t even trying to do Little Richard, wasn’t even going for the Presley version of the song. It sounded more like Sinatra, and it sounded wrong. John turned his attention from Stu and mirrored Paul’s look of confused disgust. 

George blew smoke between loud smacks of his gum. “That’s their Little Richard?” he shook his head and laughed. “See, Macca, no need to be nervous.”

For the entirety of that song, the band lost all its fears. They could do better than that, at least. They might not be trained musicians, but at least they were rockers. At least they knew what a song should feel like coming out of their smoked-out lungs and from under their calloused fingers. Paul especially got into it, spending his nervous energy taking the mickey out of the band before them. He started echoing the singer with a camped-up version of the voice he used for songs like “Till There Was You,” and John followed suit, offering sarcastic commentary on the side as though he were a BBC radio announcer. 

They got so absorbed in their pantomime that they didn’t notice when the band finished their song, the last one in their set, and left the stage.

“Think you’re funny, do you, dirty scousers?” asked the lead singer in perfect received pronunciation. He and his group, which had fanned out behind him like a peacock’s feathers, were all wearing expensive-looking red suits.

“Yeah, we are bloody funny,” John laughed. “Just not as funny as a posh ponce like yourself using daddy’s money to play rock band.”

The lead singer reddened all the way from his neck to his perfectly quaffed hair. John had hit the mark a little too sharply. 

He stepped toward John, who didn’t change his casual slouch. 

“Say that again.”

John felt Paul edging closer to him, his worry tangible. But John wasn’t worried. He’d taken on plenty of prissy momma’s boys and survived. They never actually followed through on their threats. He cocked an eyebrow. “What bit did you want again, then? The posh thing or the queer word? Your set sucked. Not as hard as your drummer there did on my--”

The lead singer swung his fist, and John felt his jaw clenching, ready for the impact, but it never came. Instead, Paul’s back slammed into his chest, knocking him back a few steps.

“And now,” the announcer said in German from the stage, “a new addition to our roster, ladies and gentlemen,”

“I’d hit you back, only we’ve got to go play some real music, now, and I need me fingers for that,” Paul hissed at the lead singer, and John caught up to what must have happened.

“The Beatles,” finished the announcer, and the lads jogged onto the stage to moderate applause.

They hadn’t planned on it, and normally it would be John, not Paul, calling a shot like this, but Paul glanced around at the others, not bothering to wipe the blood dripping from his lip. “Ready Teddy,” he said, and they all nodded. 

Paul swallowed, set his legs wide, straddling the mic, and yelled out, “Ready! Set! Go man go! I’ve got a gal that I love so,” in the tortured and charged-up voice he’d stolen from Little Richard himself. And the crowd in the club erupted in screams of surprised pleasure. Paul kept at it, the other Beatles feeding off his energy until even Pete looked like he was having a good time. George started his spindle-legged dancing as he slammed his fingers over the lead guitar. Stu flashed a James Dean smile from under his dark sunglasses. John couldn’t keep his eyes off of his songwriting partner. Dressed in leather, with his black hair coming unruly out of its vaseline restraints as he shook his head, scream-singing at the audience, humping the mic in front of him, with the bloody lip proving he’d just come from a fight, Paul looked every bit the dirty Irish Speke boy Mimi always said he was. And he was mesmerizing.

As John watched Paul that night, he realised there had to be a reason Paul had stepped in front of that punch for him. Just like there had to be a reason Paul couldn’t quite hide his jealousy of Stu. And it was the same reason he’d continued to come around to write songs when John had been ready to give all that up. The same reason he let John think he was in complete charge of the group, let him have his way unless it was important. He was in love. Paul McCartney, who’d lost his virginity before he even knew the meaning of the word, who was always chasing after some bird or other, and successfully, too, was in love with John Lennon.


	5. You Can't Catch Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John remembers showing Paul "Come Together" for the first time

The next song brought with it a twinge of guilt, and John wanted to get up and move the needle forward to the next track, but that would have required getting up, and the downer pill had really done its work by now. He felt like his bones would fall through his skin and into the mattress any second now. Maybe the guilt would fall through with them. 

In late August of 1969, John had shown up to the studio with a new song for the first time in a long time. Come Together. It was a play on one of Paul and John’s shared old favorites--Chuck Berry’s You Can’t Catch Me--with each verse alternately describing Paul, then John, then John again, then Paul again, in a gobbledigook that only Macca would understand, framed with a chorus that stated for the world what he wanted. For the two of them to come together again. It was his last attempt to reach out to Paul through song, and he didn’t want to leave his friend with any doubt as to his meaning. Talking had stopped working with the two of them by this point. When they spoke, they either joked or argued. No serious good had come of a Lennon/McCartney verbal conversation in over a year now. So John had resorted to what had always been their best form of communication anyway: music.

When he came in, announcing that he finally had a song, the sheer joy on Paul’s face had made John laugh. “Yeah, yeah, it’s been a while. But you haven’t even heard it, so don’t go getting all randy on me yet.”   
Yoko tittered next to him and pulled on his arm. 

Paul ruffled his long hair. “Hey, I’m just glad you’re here to work, son. Was getting annoying watching you laying in that bleeding bed while we worked through Georgie’s songs and--”  
“I was only recovering from a fucking car crash, mate!”

Paul raised his eyebrows and smiled. “I know, I know.”

John knew Paul knew. Knew that he’d overplayed his really minor injuries from the car crash, that he’d used the bed and Yoko and the Two Virgins cover and Allen Klein and the . . . and everything lately, to get at Paul. To make him angry enough to fight for him because that would prove that John had been wrong in India. That Paul did love him. But Paul hadn’t bit, through it all. He’d let him leave Cyn for Yoko, let him sign over with Klein, let him, let him, let him. He’d let him go, and it seemed to John that Paul hadn’t felt the pain of any of it. 

The past year and a half had been like living in that moment when he’d chosen his dad over his mum just to watch her fight for him, to see that she loved him, and to his five-year-old shock and horror, watching her walk away. Well, now he was ready to chase, crying and begging, after Paul. It was pathetic, but John knew in his heart he couldn’t survive if he didn’t have Paul, and Paul had made it clear that he could live without John. So John would have to be the beggar, as he always was. Because he wasn’t worth fighting for. He wasn’t worth loving. 

“Well, let’s hear it then,” said George, his patience with the Lennon/McCartney game obviously thin. 

John pulled out his guitar and strummed along with himself as he sang, boring his eyes into Paul’s. “Here come old flattop, he come grooving up slowly . . .”

Paul kept John’s intense stare for the entirety of the song. When it was finished, he smiled. But it wasn’t the genius Paul smile, the maniacal one that came over him at times like when he’d added the tape loops to Tomorrow Never Knows. It wasn’t the proud Paul smile, the glowing one that told John the lyrics to Strawberry Fields were realer than anything he’d ever touched. It wasn’t that secretive smirk Paul had shared with John at countless press conferences. It was the McCharmly smile, that toothy, people-pleaser smile John had watched Paul use on endless big-wigs and show-biz higher-ups since the Hamburg days. It was a weapon, and it made John step back as though he’d been slapped in the face.

“That’s great, John,” Paul started.

John heard him adding honey to that velvet voice of his.

“Really great. Those lyrics could make it the next Walrus.”

Right. Lay on the compliment. Say what you think I want to hear so you can get me to do what you want.

“But,” Paul licked his lips, even fluttered his eyelashes, for fuck’s sake. “It sounds a bit like You Can’t Catch Me, mate.”

John couldn’t believe Paul was using McCharmly on him. Had it really come to that? Was John really just some difficult person Paul had to work with? Was that all there was between them now? And Paul thought he could just flirt his way around John like he did with all the old-money businessmen and lawmen and producers and managers. Thinking of the time he’d spent crafting his secret message to Paul, like some idiot schoolboy, John’s stomach turned. He’d thought, coming in today, that Paul would understand the song, that maybe they could sing it together on one mic like they used to in the early days. But obviously, Paul didn’t understand at all. Didn’t know that John had wanted it to sound like You Can’t Catch Me on purpose to remind him of the fantasy they’d created around that song of running away together. No, Paul didn’t get it. And John wouldn’t bother trying to explain it to him. “Fuck you, McCartney,” was all he said. “Take the bloody song. You won’t sell one fucking record without it, with all your granny shit and sentimental trash. Even the straights wouldn’t buy it.” And he grabbed Yoko’s shoulder. “I’m headed out for a drink. Maybe I’ll be back. Don't bother waiting for me.” 

The look on Paul’s face, so different from the smile he’d worn when John had first announced that he had a song--a genuine smile, not McCharmly--was burned into John’s mind. Utterly crumpled by words John didn’t mean and had never had the balls to take back.

When he and Yoko were alone, John broke down. They found an empty studio down the hall, and Yoko shut the door behind them. John put his back against the wall and sank to the floor, hugging his knees. He cried like a baby. That was one of the good things about Yoko. She let him cry. She crouched beside him and stroked his hair like his mother had done once or twice, when she was around. “Mother,” John whispered. 

“Shh, shh,” Yoko said. “It’s alright, I’m here.”

After a while, John took a shuddering breath, wiped his eyes under his glasses. “He talked to . . .” He didn’t know how to explain this to her. “He-he did . . .” Another wave of sobs overtook him, and he gave up. 

Yoko put her head on his shoulder. “I know,” she said. “Remember, you and I are like two halves. I know what you’re feeling, what you’re thinking. You think Paul is just now starting to use you, manipulate you, take from you what he wants and give nothing in return.”

John looked at her. How could she know? Maybe she was right. Maybe they were two halves of the same whole.

“But you’re wrong, darling.” 

John sniffed. Yes, maybe he was overreacting. Maybe it wasn’t such a big deal that Paul had used McCharmly on him today.

Yoko continued. “Paul has always been this way. To everyone. Even you. You were just so good, so trusting, so loving, that you couldn’t see it.” 

This set John off again, and he sobbed into her chest. 

“Here, John, dear,” she said, pulling a pre-loaded syringe from her bag. “This will make it all better.”

John had thought a lot about that day in the years since it had happened. It was one of those memories that had scarred into his mind. He’d gone over it a thousand times. For the first few years, he’d used it as reassurance that Yoko was right. That Paul had never loved him. That the whole thing was just a dream. Later, he’d questioned. Was he really sure it had been McCharmly talking to him? Or had the junk made that up for him? No, he was sure. McCharmly was powerful and unmistakable. But part of him, some part deep in his soul, had known, even in seventy-one, that Paul loved him. 

He’d gone over his memories of McCharmly. The earliest being its semi-effective use on Mimi. John had been hugely impressed, as he’d never seen Mimi even slightly persuaded on anything before. And she had never been shy about her classist distaste for young Paul McCartney. What had it been that Paul had wanted from her? Oh. It was the first night he’d convinced Mimi to let him stay over. The night Julia had died. John had threatened to kill himself, and Paul had been scared out of his mind at the idea. Wouldn’t even let John shut the door to the loo. 

McCharmly had also come out when Paul had been arrested for arson in Germany. Nothing but friendliness, cute winks, and thickly accented german compliments, when the police had waved heavy batons and brandished their pistols. 

At the British Embassy party, all four of the Beatles had been scared stiff. They had expected the upper-class ladies and gents to be rude, but they’d not been prepared for the downright threatening behavior they’d been met with. The boys had been roughly handled as they were talked down to, yelled at and laughed at, shoved and pulled and grabbed. John’s fear had shown itself in the form of reciprocating the meanness in what small ways he could afford to. The usually jovial Ringo had gone quiet, and George had gotten himself thoroughly drunk. For whatever reason, Paul’s fear had become McCharmly here too. Only John had seen him come apart back at the hotel, shaking so badly his hands could barely light his cigarette.

After years of reliving the memory of playing Come Together for the first time for Paul, and especially recently having been separated from Yoko, and her constant translation of everything Paul did into her own framework of Paul’s malicious intent, John understood. Paul had become McCharmly on that day because he’d thought he’d had to. He’d been scared. And that reality hurt John more than any other bad memory he tortured himself with. He’d made Paul, his Paul, his one, scared enough of him that he’d thought he needed to hide behind McCharmly.


	6. Ain't That A Shame

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John remembers what happened in India

The song shifted, and with it, John’s thoughts. He reminded himself that he was not entirely to blame for the mess he and Paul were in. It was Paul who had started the split, after all, at that damned ashram, in India.  
When it happened, they’d been there for three weeks. Attending lectures and meditating and pretending to become enlightened and having a laugh. The jungles were the most vibrant green John had ever seen. Even greener than Scotland. India was so alive. There was the constant chanting and singing and playing of every instrument under the sun. Monkeys screamed with laughter and bugs kept up a vibrating pulse of a beat for vibrant birds to sing to. 

Not long in, John had requested a private room, away from Cyn, and the maharishi, not wanting to insult one of the sources of his new-found fame, had complied. Paul spent most of his nights there with John, and it was almost like the summer of sixty-seven, when Jane had been away acting in some shindig or other and John had taken her place at Cavendish. Not that the Left side of Paul’s bed had ever belonged to Jane. To anyone but John. But in sixty-seven, the obstacle that was Jane Asher had been removed for a time, and for John, and he could only assume for Paul, life had been paradise. And now, in India, it was nearly the same. Perfect bliss. Domestic bliss. Wild bliss. Marital bliss. Here in the jungle, there was endless downtime. They weren’t making an album. They slagged off lectures like they’d slagged off school so many years ago. To go write songs, or, just as often, to go have sex. They didn’t have anywhere they needed to be except with each other.

One humid afternoon, it must've been about a hundred degrees, with Paul's naked body sticky on top of his own, lush jungle moss damp beneath them, John had breached the subject that had been on his mind since a British law had changed late last year. “Paul?”

Paul rolled off and propped himself on his elbow. “Yes, John love?” He ran a hand gently through John’s hair.

“It’s legal now, Paulie. Us.”

Paul’s smile faded and he pulled his hand back. 

John pressed. “Come on, Macca, we always said if only things were different. Well, now things are different.”

Paul sat up, no longer looking at John. “John, no they--”

John sat up too, hating his voice for growing ever more insistent, like a pleading child. “They can’t stop us now. Leave Jane. I’ll leave Cyn. They’ll understand. We’ll support them.” He kept talking, and fast, afraid to hear Paul’s answer that would come when he stopped. “I’ll finally be able to hold your hand out in the open. No more hiding under tables.” He jabbered on to Paul’s blank profile. “And you’ve always been more than Uncle Paul to Julian. Now you can be his father. I know you want it, Paul, almost as much as you know I need it.”

“I do want it, Johnny, I do.” Paul finally looked faced him again, and John could see the panic behind his purposely expressionless eyes. 

“Well, then, how about it? Let’s tell the world, Macca.” 

Paul scoffed and shook his head. “And how exactly do you think the world will respond?” He threw up his hands and grabbed his shirt, tossing the billowing Indian design over his sweaty skin.   
John had no response except that he didn’t care. But Paul did. Of course Paul did. 

Pulling on his pants, Paul continued. “Remember when America first saw the bloody mop-tops? Half the dads wouldn’t let their boys listen to our music scared that their kids would end up queer.” Paul angrily tied up his pants and began to pace. “And that was just the beginning of it. They went berzerk over one tiny comment about the fact that the church’s congregations were shrinking. Burned records, death threats, poor Ritchie hiding behind his cymbals--”

“Don’t fucking remind me, Paul.” John shoved his clothes back on too as he argued. “You of all people know I already lacerate myself ov--”

“I know, John! It was worse for you than it was for us, far worse! So you should know what I’m talking about. And I can tell you’re exhausted constantly sticking up for me about the acid--”

“Well, I’m the one pressured you into--”

“Doesn’t matter, Johnny, that’s not the point.” Paul stopped his pacing, and put a hand on John’s shoulder. “Look, you know I love you.”

John swallowed down the lump in his throat that those words, so rare from Paul, always brought.

Paul leveled his gaze, locking John’s eyes with his. “John?”

John swallowed, nodded. “I know. And I love you.” He knew it was a pointless thing to say. He knew his love for Paul was childishly obvious. But he had to let the words out. Couldn’t stop them. 

Paul smiled his fatherly smile. “I know you do. I just hope you can understand me. Understand that this is not a rejection.”

John’s stomach froze. 

“But what we’ve created. This thing that is the Beatles. It’s more important than getting to hold your hand in public. We’ve -- our music, it’s -- we’ve created a better world. A place that’s more open, more free, more loving than our parents could ever have dreamed. I mean, can you imagine? Now, it doesn’t matter if you’re an illegitimate child. Your mum, John. She could’ve been allowed to raise you. We could’ve been neighbors. And mine, she--she might never have died, because maybe they’d have caught it earlier because people talk about that kind of thing now. Think about what we did in Florida for all those American kids who’d never been within arms-reach of another race. All kinds of new ideas, people talking about ending the war in--”

“Yes, Paul, yes, it’s all very great. But what’s your point? What does this all have to do with us coming out with the truth about us, with showing our love to the world? If anything I think it proves you wrong. If the world really is so different than the one we knew as kids, such a loving, accepting world, shouldn’t it accept us? Especially if we’re the creators?”

Paul shook his head sadly. “I’m saying, we were only able to help those changes along because we--because they think we’re normal. The second they know we’re queer for each other they’ll disregard everything we’ve ever said. Not everyone, no. But a lot of people. All our songs, all our everything. Next thing you know everyone’s getting crew cuts again because they’re scared of getting called a pussy. Your song, your beautiful anti-war inspirational anthem that we sang for four hundred million people all over the world will become ‘All you need is lube,’ or some sick thing like that. Do you see what I mean? We can't risk breaking that just for ourselves."

John had felt himself sagging with every new word. Eventually, he'd let Paul keep pacing by himself, sat back down on the mossy jungle floor. A large black beetle crawled over his foot. Those words, “queer for each other”. Was that all it was to Paul? The idea that his feelings for Paul could be stripped back to a hankering for a doe-eyed dick was maddening. For John, Paul was everything. Every inch of this beautiful jungle was Paul for him, meaningless if Paul wasn’t here. Every word or note he ever wrote had Paul pulsing through it. He’d thought Paul had known that. A coldness settled over him. 

Paul, at last noticing John’s stupor, stopped his ranting and squatted next to him. 

John looked up into Paul's big shining eyes. "I didn't write it for four hundred thousand people."

Paul scrunched his eyebrows. "What?" 

"All You Need Is Love. I didn't write it for them, I--" 

"What do you mean, they told us to write a song for that worldwide broadcast and--" 

"Will you fucking listen, Macca? I wrote it for you."

If, in that moment, John had been capable of feeling anything but dejection, he might have found it amusing to watch the expressive face change as wheels turned in Paul's head. At least four different emotions registered on Paul's features before he shook his head and forced a neutral expression. "I know, Johnny, and all mine are for you. But we write for the world, too, don't we?" 

John looked long and hard at his partner before he answered. He’d thought Paul had known. He’d even thought, insanely, he now realized, that Paul might have felt the same. He took the churning shame in his stomach and forced it into something easier. "You know, for me, Paul, the Beatles was always about loving you.” The subtle anger took hold. “But for you, I guess, it's the opposite. Loving me was always just about the band."

"No. John, love, it's not as simple as that." Paul reached out for John's shoulder, but John pushed his hand away. 

"Leave me alone, Paul." He couldn't believe he'd been so stupid. To assume someone like James Paul McCartney could ever fully reciprocate his love. Who did he think he was that he could be more than a music partner who it was handy to fuck? 

"John, I'm sorry. I--" 

"Go screw yourself."

"John, come on, don't do this. You know I thought you would get it, I really did."

"Oh, I bloody well get it, Paul," John growled. "Go find your fiance." 

"I'm not leaving you alone in the jungle, John."

"I'm not your kid, McCartney."

Paul stiffened, then put a tentative hand on John's shoulder again.

John hated how tender the touch was when he knew now it wasn't a loving one. Not real love anyway. 

"I'm not leaving you. Not now, not ever," said Paul. 

John shrugged off the gentle hand and stood up quickly. He didn't look back as he walked off toward the camp, toward the others, the lads, the girls, where the conversation couldn't continue. 

A branch snapped and ferns rustled as Paul hurried to catch up with him. He yanked on John's arm and whirled him around. 

When John met Paul’s eyes, the patient father was gone. There was real anger there now. “It means that little to you? Everything we’ve created? You’d really throw it all away?”

John glared. “For you I fucking would have because that’s love, and I loved you, Paul.” John felt his own sharp intake of breath collide with Paul’s, and his partner let go of his arm, his mouth left ajar in the shock of that word in past tense. John was as surprised to hear himself say it as Paul had been, but as he watched Paul take a hard swallow, scrunch his eyebrows, then stare at his shifting feet, he was glad he’d hurt him. Maybe now, Paul might finally understand. “I loved you,” he repeated, his voice solid now. No longer that of a petulant child. “And if you ever loved me, you would have given it all up for me in a second.”

And that was where the letting had begun. Until that moment, Paul McCartney had fought and fought and fought for John Lennon. But that day, in the Indian Jungle, he let him walk away. John could feel Paul’s eyes on his back as tears began to stream from his eyes, and he begged him in his mind to chase after him again, to pull him in and cradle him and tell him he would always love him. But Paul had let John go. And the next day, Paul had boarded a plane.


	7. Do You Wanna Dance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John remembers the first time poor George walked in on him and Paul

It took John erupting in a snort of laughter to realize he’d begun crying as he’d lain there in bed, the record playing on. What was wrong with him? He hadn’t been this out-of-control emotionally in a while and he felt like his bipolar great aunt. But as the song had swelled, the laughter had with it. 

In the early days of their being together, John and Paul had used records, loud records, to cover up the sound of their love-making, and it just so happened that the first time poor little Georgie had walked in on them, they’d been playing this one. The up-tempo song had a background percussion which sounded a lot like a rattling bed frame, a pounding piano part, and conveniently, Bobby Freeman had decided to sing the melody in a sexual moan of a voice. It was the perfect cover, and it was a frequent choice.

Usually, they were careful. Well. “They” was the wrong word. Usually, Paul was careful. Annoyingly careful. It took all the tension out of a moment, when Paul would suddenly pause, often just when things were starting to turn exciting, and re-check that the door was locked. 

That day, they hadn’t been careful at all. Because Paul was more than a little drunk, and John had just been glad not to be interrupted by his partner’s fastidiousness. They’d been under the covers, John on top this time, shaking the cheap hotel bed frame with a vengeance. “Do You Wanna Dance” blasting through the record player’s poor overused speakers. Paul not bothering to bite back a moan. When the door had been thrown open. 

“Me and Ritchie are going to get some sandwiches,” George yelled over the record. 

John froze. Looked at Paul’s panicked eyes under the covers. 

“You two wan--” George cut himself off. There was a pause. “What’re you--”

Paul shoved John off him. Still quite drunk, he slurred, “Get out, Geo, we’re try’na sleep!”

The stupidness of the cover had hit John over the head and he hadn’t been able to hold back his laughter. Trying to sleep to a blaring old rock’n’roll dance hall song. Sometimes, when John was randy, things which he normally would have found mildly funny suddenly became hilarious. This had been one of those times. He shrieked with laughter. Paul’s grumpy shove under the blankets only made everything funnier. 

“Squeeze me all through the night, oh baby,” moaned Bobby through the speakers.

John howled with laughter. 

“Shut up, John,” growled Paul.

George flipped on the light, hurting John’s eyes, even through the covers, strode to the record player, and switched it off. “You’re not bloody trying to sleep, Macca,” said George, his tone wary. John felt George’s hand hover over their blanket and didn’t budge. It was about time the other two found out, anyway. 

“Try’na sleep. Put the light back out,” mumbled a still drunken Paul, but even he must have known it was pointless at this stage of the proceedings. After a moment’s hesitation, as though he were ripping off a plaster, George threw back the covers. 

At George’s look of childish revulsion, John fell into his giggles again. “Hi Georgie.”

But before John could even finish their bandmate’s name, Paul had them covered again. “Fuck off, George,” he said with a glare.

“Ringo!” George had yelled across the wall. 

“Told you not to ask them, mate,” was Ringo’s only reply.

That had set John pealing into laughter again, his guffaws almost enough to cover Paul’s final, “Get OUT!” to George. So Ringo had known. But for how long? Good old Ritchie. And he had never said anything. Never pressed them or laughed at them. 

John saw George out of their hotel room, put out the lights, put the record back on, crawled back under the covers next to Paul, and coaxed the grouchy drunk back into the mood.

After that night, that song had become a free pass for alone time. Any time John wanted the other two out of the room, all he had to do was start an obnoxious rendition of “Do You Wanna Dance,” and he’d have Paul all to himself.


	8. Sweet Little Sixteen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Paul's Sixteenth Birthday

John felt better after a bit of a cry and a good laugh. The heaviness of missing Paul physically left him, though his mind was still absorbed, as it annoyingly always was, with thoughts of his old partner. He felt empty, now. And light with the emptiness. Even the downer pill seemed to have passed. Too quickly. It was all the heroine he’d done with Yoko. It had ruined his body’s response to all other drugs. Even good old nicotine didn’t do what it used to. Still, he reached for another cigarette. As he smoked, he stood from the bed, stretched, and began to pace around the room. Absently, without really caring if the room was a mess, John began to tidy up, stacking the records he’d rifled carelessly through neatly back on their shelf. 

Sweet Little Sixteen, another Chuck Berry song, was the next track on the record Paul had compiled for him so long ago. Paul had said he’d put the song in the mix because he’d always thought John’s cover of it was sexy. Something about the way he’d sung, “Oh daddy, daddy,” so sincerely, so full of need. But John associated a different memory with the song. Paul’s sixteenth birthday. 1958. The same year Chuck Berry had released the song. And in Liverpool, it had been everywhere. Every record shop. Every pub, bar, club, diner. Everywhere. It was playing at the party they’d crashed--Paul, John, Stu, George, Shotton, Ivy, and a few other lads--on the night of Paul’s birthday.

The party was for the daughter of some banker--money enough to rent the Moon & Stars club for the night, and new enough money not to know that was a stupid thing for a father to do for his daughter. None of the boys knew the girl beyond that she went to the art college, but they snuck in through the club’s bathroom window, a strategy which didn’t always work but was always worth a try. This time, the crashing went smoothly, other than the window shutting on Ivan’s ass as he scrambled through, but this only made it more of a success from John’s point of view, as it meant he’d have something to make fun of for the night.

Paul had shown up at John and Stu’s apartment earlier that evening, his fluffy black hair greased back Presley-style. As soon as Stu had shut the door behind him, Paul had stripped off his slacks, revealing black drainpipes beneath them. Jim hated teddy boy clothes, and usually Paul, not one to argue with his father, let him have his way. But not that night. When the slacks had been removed, the shirt followed suit revealing a tight white t-shirt beneath it. Paul glared at John and Stu. “Not a word,” he said. 

John wasn’t sure if Paul meant that they shouldn’t tell Jim or that they shouldn’t poke fun, but either way, he didn’t argue. How could he argue, when he had a perfect baby Elvis glaring him down? He grinned and patted Paul’s shoulder in what he hoped would look like an elder-brotherly manner. “Well, you’re the birthday boy.”

Stu arched an eyebrow at John. “How old did you say he was turning again, Lennon? Fifteen?”

“No, I think it was twelve,” John answered. 

Paul shoved his shoulder, and John tried to ignore the tugging feeling being touched by Paul was starting to give him. “Come on,” Paul said. “Let’s go get Ivy and Geo.” It was only a few hours ago that Paul had been fifteen. But now he was sixteen. Sixteen and choosing his own clothes, even if he did have to do it behind his father’s back. But something about Paul seemed different tonight. Something that forced John to admit maybe he did have respect for Paul-- outside the fact that the younger boy had basically taught him guitar. Outside of music. The two years separating them didn’t seem so important just then.

Later, inside the crowded Moon & Stars, Paul had continued to act older than the fifteen-year-old image John had etched into his mind. Older than the boy John had to coax into sagging off school with the promise that they would spend their time writing songs, songs which would eventually earn them a living better than anything they learned in class. Older than the boy who let his father cut his hair, who willingly helped his little brother with his homework, who said, “yes missus,” and “thank you missus,” to the Mimi John often told to “fuck off”.

John stared as Paul had expertly ripped the top of a beer bottle off with his glistening white teeth and swigged the stuff like it was milk. “Thought you didn’t drink,” John said, squinting. Paul had even explained his reason once, without going into any detail. Apparently Jim had been through a rough patch with the bottle after Mary’s death.

Paul smirked at John’s surprise, and pointedly took a big gulp. “Just not in my living room in the middle of the day when I’m supposed to be writing.”

John looked at Stu in disbelief. Stu gave only a disinterested shrug. 

“It’s true.” George piped up from behind John. “I’ve only seen him really drunk once or twice, though.”

“Dunno why you care so much, mate,” said Shotton.

“I don’t,” John said hastily. “I just didn’t know is all.” He turned back to Paul, but Paul was gone. “Where’d he go?” 

“Probably off to find a bird to shag,” shrugged George, taking a sip of his own beer.

“When did he start doing that?”

George laughed. “Cor, you think he told me? D’ya think I asked? All I know is it’s been going on as long as I’ve known him.” 

“Well let’s not let Macca have all the fun, lads.” Ivan gripped Shotton's and John’s shoulders. “Anyone wanna be my wingman?”

John shook himself out of his daze. Ivy was right. He would work out this new side of Paul later. “I’m game. Stu?”

Stu shook his head. “No. But don’t wait up for me, John.” 

John grinned. “There’s a kid, Stu, there’s a kid.”

Ivan and George disappeared into the crowd of dancing teens and twenty-somethings, and Pete and John did the same in a different direction. After a bit of elbowing, a few glares, and one turned down drink, John was finally starting to have success with a curvy blonde. He put a hand under her chin and tilted her face back toward his as he talked about how he was in a rock and roll group himself. How his parents had abandoned him as a kid. How he was a tough teddy boy because he had to be to survive. His usual bullshit shtick. And it was working. She was batting her eyes, breathing fast, didn’t shrink away when he put his hand on her waist. He leaned in and planted a kiss on her jawline, receiving a pleasured sigh in return. 

But over the sigh, he heard a girl not far away whimpering something that sounded suspiciously like “Oh, Paul, Ohhh, Paaauuul.”

John pulled back from the girl’s neck, leaving her to stare in confusion as he scanned the area. Sure enough, there was that black leather jacket, arms pressed into the club’s dark brick wall, a pair of long thin legs wrapped around the drainpipes, her kitten heels hooked. Paul pressed himself into the girl as she repeated her plea for more from him. John watched, dumbstruck, as Paul stopped his grinding for a moment, turned his head, and whispered something to her. She nodded, ridiculously eager, and he grabbed her hand and pulled her down some shadowy hallway. 

“John?” asked the girl he’d been hitting on. He couldn’t remember her name. In fact, in staring at Paul, he’d forgotten where he was, what he was doing, everything. “John,” she repeated. “Are you alright?”

He shook himself, and without bothering to explain anything to the girl, grabbed another drink and headed for the club exit. Hot jealousy pulsed in John’s veins. There was no other word for it. John was very familiar with the emotion. It was just about a daily thing for him. And it wasn’t even particularly strange to feel jealousy toward Paul. Hadn’t he been jealous on that first day they’d met, when Paul had so easily drawn a large cluster of onlookers with his rendition of Twenty-flight Rock and his Little Richard impression? But this was different. As he’d watched Paul in the club, groping that girl’s breasts, sucking at her neck, John had realised he wasnt’ jealous of Paul. Not in the way he might have expected. He didn’t hate Paul for getting it with a sexy bird. He didn’t wish he was Paul. He wished he was the girl. 

Wished it was him Paul had led away to someplace more private.

The thought was frightening. He’d known Paul was good-looking all along. No one could look at James Paul McCartney and not think him a very pretty young boy indeed. But John had never thought of Paul’s beauty in that way before. In the way of wanting it. Wanting to own and be owned by Paul and his godlike shoulders and full lips and tall, lean frame. He had to put it away. This desire. Paul would never reciprocate it. So what things had worked out with Stu? Stu was experimental at school. He didn’t make jokes about drawing the nude male models like many of the others. Stu had been brought up in a household that was well-off enough to afford open mindedness.

John had had and been had by Stu. But something like that was never going to happen with straight, working-class Paul. Put it away, John. Put it away.


	9. Slippin and Slidin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John remembers meeting Linda and wondering if he and Paul will ever be able to make something work again with her in the picture

Slippin and Slidin, the Buddy Holly acoustic version, had John transported to the bed of a beet farmer’s truck hitchhiking with Paul to Scotland. Had him lulled into a peaceful, sweet memory. He could smell the dark dirt they’d rubbed off the beets, before popping the crunchy sweet things into their hungry mouths behind the farmer’s back. He felt the softness of Paul’s eyes as the younger boy had stared through him at the lush green hills rolling past and finally offered some voluntary information about the loss of his mother. But then Buddy went into the third verse, singing, “Oh Malinda, she’s a solid sender, you know you’d better surrender.” As if someone had pushed him roughly out of bed, John woke from the sweet dream of a memory. For a moment, he’d thought he’d heard “Oh my Linda.” 

Damn that saintly, blonde, collected, full-breasted photographer. If she hadn’t found Paul in New York, things might have ended very differently for the Beatles.

After India, it had been clear to everyone in the Beatles’ circle that John and Paul needed some time to themselves to sort things out. No one knew, of course. No one would ever know. But they had heard John singing “Feel so suicidal, even hate my own rock and roll,” and noticed when Paul had started screaming desperately through many of his songs. So they’d sent them alone to promote Apple in New York.

Not wanting to invite any questions about just what might have happened between them at the ashram, Paul and John had wordlessly agreed to go along with it. John hoped secretly that this trip, just the two of them like the old days, might be a chance to patch things up with Paul. The weeks since their split had been sheer torture for John. He’d made that clear enough in his songs. Paul had to know. He planned that the minute they were in their room alone together, he’d apologize. A rare thing. Then maybe they could trip together, enter each other’s minds like they used to, and then, yes, they could talk it out. Try to find some arrangement that would work for both of them. 

The plane ride to New York was a quiet one. Paul pulled out a book and pretended to read. Maybe he really had read, the emotionless bastard. John stared out the window at the blank expanse of textureless grey around them, and planned out what he would say to Paul once they were alone in their room. The stiff tension continued between the pair at the press conference. John found himself doing most of the heavy lifting, with Paul staring off into space as though the last thing he cared about in the world was this company the Beatles had started as a way of keeping their money from the government. John couldn’t care less either, but he made it sound like some great Communist artist’s ideal, and heard Paul jumping in when the reporters began to badger him, instinctively standing by John’s side and defending him for the world.

Without Brian there to tell them when to end the questions, John and Paul let the reporters hold them for far longer than would normally be allowed, both dying for an escape but subconsciously waiting for Brian’s signal. Paul must’ve remembered first that their beloved manager had died, and this, along with everything else now, was up to them to take in hand. Out of the corner of his eye, John watched Paul spider walk his fingers across their table, being careful not to touch his partner, but using their old signal. Time to end it. 

“That’s it,” John said, standing up rather abruptly and followed smoothly by Paul. “That’s all the questions we’ll be doing today.” 

But the press, as always, was not satisfied with that. John and Paul were bombarded as they headed for the door. Notebooks. Cameras. Microphones. Pens. They couldn’t avoid touching each other now, as they were shoved and jostled in their journey to the exit of the pressroom. It was strange how familiar Paul’s shoulder felt digging into his own, how their feet still knew each other’s patterns well enough to avoid stepping on each other in the commotion. Suddenly, Paul reached out over John’s shoulder and took a ripped slip of paper from one of the press. “Ta,” he called over the noise. “Thanks, thanks.”

When they finally found themselves on the other side of a police-guarded door, in the hallway leading to the hotel lobby, John took a deep breath in and heard Paul doing the same next to him. But there was a smile in Paul’s exhale. What had that paper been to make Paul so happy?

“Look, mate, I’m going to make a call,” Paul said. “See you upstairs in a few.” 

John had gone up to their room and waited, but he’d never gotten his hotel room alone with Paul. The paper had, of course, contained Linda’s phone number, and Paul had spent all of the trip--every minute that wasn’t mandatory Apple business--with her. 

What was it about Linda? John had never understood it. He remembered Paul had hit it off with her at the Pepper release party, but that, he’d assumed, was nothing. Just the usual randy Macca sticking his dick in a pretty puss. But then, in New York, it was like she was his wife.

She’d ridden back to the airport with them in their car. Taken pictures. And the way Paul had talked to her. It was different. “Oh, Heather would love Martha. Yeah, she’s so sweet with kids, and especially one with all that energy, they’d have a blast.” He’d leaned into her when she’d talked, as if the words coming out of her mouth might help him pass some all-important test. He’d touched her hand with such tenderness, seemed in awe of her independence and easy-going manner. Paul ignored John in favor of Linda exactly the way he’d so often ignored Jane or the other flings in favor of John.

John had reverted to his usual defenses, crude jokes and sneering insults. But Linda was imperturbable. She laughed as heartily at the vulgar humor as Mal Evans or Mic Jagger might have. And when John insulted her shoes, she responded with a light, “well, I did steal them from your mother’s coffin.” John expected Paul to jump in there, with a gentle reminder to Linda that John had lost his mother when he was just a kid, but Paul had only laughed. John hated the two of them together more than he’d hated Paul together with all the hundreds of other girls combined. 

When they’d returned to London, John had given in to Yoko, who, to put it lightly, had made her desire to be with him quite clear for nearly a year by that point, and that had been the end of it. The end of the inseparable John and Paul and the beginning of John and Yoko against Linda and Paul.

Well, John and Yoko was over too, now. They might still be legally married, and yes, Yoko did still call May to keep tabs. But the two of them as an item--the bagisms and bed ins, the shooting up and the “us against the world”-- that was over. The idea of John and May was appealing at times. She was a nice girl. A very nice girl. And fun. And she took care of him. But he couldn’t love her in the obsessive way he had loved Yoko, or in the soulful way he had loved Paul. He would end up loving May like he’d loved poor Cyn. It wouldn’t take him long to start taking her for granted. Ignoring her, insulting her, cheating on her. There could never be a John and May. And when John thought about it, he didn’t really want there to be. He knew he didn’t want another Cynthia, and definitely not another Yoko. What he really wanted, more than anything in the world, was to be with Paul again. And wasn’t that what Paul had said the other night? Before John had got jealous and things had gone wrong? That he wanted, more than anything, to be with John again. More than anything.

John threw the butt of his cigarette aimlessly and leaned over the record player, watching the old, well-loved vinyl spin. Could they ever make it work again? That night, two or three nights ago, singing with Paul, had been quite the shot. John’s current withdrawals were proof. But the good had gone so wrong, so quick. Could John handle being just friends? Like they used to be in the first few years? They'd both been so innocent then.


	10. Peggy Sue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John remembers playing Peggy Sue early on at Forthlin Road

John’s lips pulled into a thin, crooked smile as the next track slid into his mind. Peggy Sue. He couldn’t tell anymore if his thoughts were following the record or if it was rearranging its tracklist to keep up with his wandering mind. John laughed at himself. Such a child. 

In his mind, he was at number twenty Forthlin Road, in a very old memory from back when the council house was new to him. He remembered admiring the patchwork of carpeting covering the tiny livingroom’s floor, and thinking how clever the different strips of wallpaper looked on the walls. Paul hadn’t explained to him until much later about how much money someone could save if they bought ends and bobs rather than full rolls. About how desperately embarrassed his mother Mary had been by the mismatched designs. But John thought it was brilliant. 

He and Paul had begun sitting in the two cozy, dilapidated armchairs across from each other which were the only furniture, besides Jim’s trusty piano, in the room. But John had squinted at Paul’s fingers as the younger boy had shown him proper hand placement on their guitar strings, and Paul had obligingly decided they should sit on the floor to be closer. There they sat, barely a breath away, John’s guitar a relatively new presence for him, resting on his knee, as he awkwardly mirrored Paul’s strumming and picking. “And instead of putting your third finger there on the fourth string, you put it on the second,” Paul explained. He strummed the chord.

John copied him, but it didn’t come out right. “Damn,” he said. “Why doesn’t it work for me?”

Paul scratched above a dark arched eyebrow. “It would work for you only you’re muting it. You’ve got to press on the fret, there, on the metal line. Not the wood between it.” 

He reached over and moved John’s finger ever so slightly up on his instrument. 

John narrowed his eyes, uncomfortable with the way Paul touching his hands made him feel, but didn’t argue. He needed to learn this.

“Sorry,” Paul said quickly, perhaps already sensing John’s thoughts. “It’s just easier, y’know.” 

John said nothing. He sniffed, kept his eyes on his hand, and strummed. The chord came out right, and he sighed in satisfaction, then strummed it again, adding a rhythm to it and transitioning it to two of the other chords Paul had taught him. Real guitar chords sounded much better on a guitar than banjo chords had. 

“Hey, that’s great,” Paul said. 

John looked up to see the unfettered grin breaking across Paul’s face. He couldn't help but return it.

“When’d you come up with that, then?” Asked Paul.

John shrugged. “I didn’t come up with it. Just the chords you gave me.” 

Paul gave an impressed frown, and didn’t push the subject further. “Y’know, those are the same three chords Buddy Holly used to write Peggy Sue.” 

“That’s a stupid song.” 

“Aye, but it’s a popular one.”

John caught Paul’s meaning. Just three chords was all Buddy Holly had needed to create fame and fortune. And they knew five or six, now. 

Paul picked up his guitar. A used right-handed guitar restrung to become lefty. He strummed the three simple chords in the order and rhythm Buddy Holly had chosen and started to sing, “Peggy Sue.”

John joined him and their voices matched each other like waves of electricity creating a current. Soon, it became a battle. Paul added a flourish of a pic between verses. John dropped his voice down a third below Paul’s to create a harmony. Paul started into a Presley impersonation. John added a fourth verse to Buddy Holly’s last one. Paul added a descending harmony on his guitar while his voice climbed up a fifth above John’s now. They played it again, this time with John echoing Paul’s melody with a harmonic answer, with each of them taking a turn trying to outdo the other in a solo verse and coming together for the chorus, playing louder and standing up and starting to dance and shout-sing the song into each other’s mouths.

John’s heart was in his throat by the time they strummed together a final finish to their extended and complex cover of Peggy Sue. He sucked in a breath, and exhaled in a gleeful laugh. Paul’s eyes were glittering, and he laughed too.

“Damn, that was good,” Paul breathed.

He returned John’s awed stare for a moment, absently picking quietly at his guitar strings. Then he cleared his throat and set his guitar on a chair. “Tea?” he asked, then hurried into the kitchen without waiting for the answer.  
John shook himself, recovering from the ecstasy of what he’d just participated in and flopped down into the other chair. “Ta,” he called through the wall. Under the clatter of Paul in the kitchen, John’s mind was loud with a thousand whirring thoughts. Paul had said he liked songwriting when they’d met between the Quarrymen’s sets at the fete a few weeks ago. How many songs had he written? And were they any good? If they were half as good as what they’d just done together, playing off the simplest song in rock and roll, they had to be amazing. John had a rising suspicion that they were.

And they had been. Paul’s songs. And they were now. So were John’s. Still, neither of them on their own had been able to reach that paradise dimension they’d accessed together. Whatever arrangement they had to come to--even if it had to include Linda--would be worth getting that magic high again, that thing that didn’t exist outside the two of them together.


	11. Bring it on Home to Me/Send Me Some Love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John gets horny thinking about Paul

The next songs Paul had strung together were two more of their favorite songs to make love to. They’d both found it arousing when Sam Cooke and Lou Rawls echoed eachother’s “yeahs” back and forth in such a sexually aggressive manner. It had been one of the inspirations behind so many of their songs in which they talked to each other rather than talking to their fans. It was a bold and daring thing, Sam and Lou had done. Two men, in 1962, gruff voices filled with testosterone, singing sex to each other, right there on a vinyl anyone could buy. Voice-fucking, as Paul had called it, for everyone to hear. It had thrilled them both to the core, when they’d heard it for the first time, and many nights after that, it had become the soundtrack to some of their softest, purest sex. Real love-making full of tender touches and whispered reassurances, quiet sighs of ecstasy and worshipful kisses. 

As John allowed himself to drown in a pool of those memories, a thousand snatches of pure love from a thousand stolen nights, he found himself singing along. “If you ever,” he moaned, gripping the record player, “Change your mi-hind.” He swallowed, imagining the song travelling through the miles to Paul. “About leaving,” he threw his head back, “Leaving me behi-hind.” He stared at the wall as if Paul were standing right on the other side, “Baby, bring it to me. Bring your sweet loving. Bring it on home to me.” He sang with everything he had, and when Lou Rawls echoed his “yeah” he imagined it was Paul singing lustily back at him. He continued through the song with Sam and Lou and maybe, somehow, Paul, through the apology, the explanation for the wrongdoing, through the promising and the begging, the forgiveness. He belted every word, feeling his vocal chords stretched to their limit, not as durable as they once were, but in the moment, not caring if they tore right out of his throat. 

By the end of the song, his pants had tented embarrassingly, but John hardly noticed. An idea had attached itself somewhere near the edge of his brain and was clinging there, blown and tossed about by the storm in his mind, for dear life. He wanted to sing this song across the air to Paul. He wanted to sing all of them to him. John began to pace, absently rubbing himself, as the plan formulated. He would call the album a collection of rock singles. Promote it talking about how he was a rocker at heart. How that era of music had always been the good stuff to him, blah, blah, blah. But it would all be for Paul, and Paul would know it. It had worked before, singing rock and roll covers, to get Paul into his band, into his bed. Why shouldn't it work again? 

The song switched to the second romantic love-making soundtrack, this one by Little Richard, and John allowed his fantasies of Paul listening to this future Rock’N’Roll record get the better of him as he took care of his erection himself like some randy teenager.


	12. Bony Moronie

Ecstatic with his new plan, John didn’t slip into any bitter memories with the next song. Nearly delirious, he found himself dancing, even jumping on the bed, as he sang along with this song. “She’s something to see, she really catches the eye!” Didn’t that lyric apply perfectly to Paul? Yes. Everything would work out great. Without thinking, he opened the bedroom door and yelled for May, just wanting someone to share his happiness. “May!” He yelled into the hallway. “May, where are you? Come dance with me?”

May appeared, still wearing casual shorts and a tank top, but otherwise all done up to go out--clearly she had no intention of letting John back out of his promise--her silky black hair falling gorgeous past her waist, and perfectly applied liner around her shining eyes. 

“Everything’s gonna be alright, May,” John yelled when he saw her. 

Her eyes widened, surprised at his unnecessary tone, but the smile that followed was genuine. “Yeah, it is,” she nodded, her eyes searching his face.

“Sorry,” John quieted, taking her hand. “I’m not on anything, I promise,”

“John, I don’t mind if you are, so long as you’re safe.” She put a hand to his cheek. 

He laughed. Kissed her. “I’m the luckiest man in the world,” he said, pulling her down the hall back toward the bedroom where the record was now playing the last verse of Bony Moronie. Thoughts of Paul laughing on a sunny day on a yacht flitted through John’s head as he twirled a giggling May around the bedroom. “Help me practice my dancing so I don’t embarrass you when we go to that club you like tonight,” he said.

“Oh, come on, who could be embarrassed to be with you?” May rolled her eyes.

“Right. I should probably just do this the whole time.” John put his hands on his knees and switched them back and forth. 

May threw her head back. “Yes, definitely.” 

She was so beautiful. John put his hands on her hips and brought her close to himself. “I’m not gonna do that at the club, though, May.” He met her dancing eyes. “Let’s get it on tonight, yeah?”

May beamed. “Yeah.”


	13. Ya Ya

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John remembers the reason this track made it onto the anniversary gift. Another Hamburg memory.

Ya Ya  
But as May was kissing him, the song shifted, and John snorted his laughter into her mouth. He’d forgotten all about this song. He’d even forgotten why it had made it onto the album.

Startled, but not offended, May pressed her palms to John’s cheeks. “What’s so funny?” she asked, genuinely curious.

Could he tell her? No. He could never tell anyone. He trusted May, but Paul trusted him not to tell. That was the one sacred thing they had left between them, and he wasn’t going to break it. But he could tell her part of it. “Paul gave me this record,” he shrugged. “For my birthday. Before, uh, back when we were tight.”

May nodded, an unspoken understanding in her soft smile.

“It was a joke record. Inside jokes between me and him, and some with George and Ringo. Anyway, gosh, I forgot this song was on here.” He laughed again. “We did a, we did some time in Hamburg, I don’t know if I told you, not time like jail time, although, anyway, the girls there would sort of go,” John elevated his voice and rolled his eyes back, “Ya, ya, oh, ya,” he changed his voice back to his own and met May’s laughing eyes. “Cause that’s what, that’s how they’d say,” 

May nodded. “That’s how you say ‘yes’ in German. I know.” She shook her head affectionately. “You boys and your dumb jokes.” 

John cocked an eyebrow and smirked. “Anyway, we thought we were funny. We’d use it as a code. You know. Did you get your ya ya last night. So we could sort of congratulate each other without anyone else knowing.” It was half true. The german prostitutes' word for “yes” had become a sort of code for John and Paul. But it was one they used to let each other know they wanted to sneak away, even to some bathroom stall for a quickie. Still, the memory of the first inspiration for that code never ceased to make John laugh. Their last stint in Hamburg, it had been. A year after the Paris trip. They were as successful as they could ever have reasonably hoped to become, playing at the Star Club, staying in real rooms, landing a record deal to back Tony Sheridan. 

It was a freezing winter’s night, and they were thoroughly glad not to be back in their accommodations from their first trip to Hamburg. Paul and John were completing one of their favorite past times, in their bed together with two girls. And Paul, who could usually last an almost obscene length of time, found himself coming from laughter about three minutes in. The girl he was with kept screaming, “ya, ya,” and John, making eye-contact with Paul and knowing exactly what he was doing, mimicked her. All while going cross-eyed, puffing his cheeks, sticking his tongue out and shaking his head until Paul’s convulsions of laughter turned to ejaculation. “Damn you, Johnny,” he’d yelled, though he was still laughing, and the girl, disappointed, and for good reason, had angrily shoved him off. 

May slapped John’s ass, waking him from his memory. “Here.” She handed him a blue velvet dinner jacket hung over a jean shirt. “Think this would look good for tonight?”

As he took the hanger, John pulled May in for a kiss, but just as their lips touched, the phone rang down the hall. 

May pulled back, a slight frown creasing her face. “I should get that. It’s probably Yoko.”

John nodded. “You’ll tell me what she says?”

Hand on the doorknob, May gave a melancholy smirk. “You can listen on the other line if you want to. I won’t tell her.”

“I know you won’t, but she’ll know. Somehow. She just knows things.” 

“She’s not supernatural, John,” May rolled her eyes as she dashed into the hall to answer the still-ringing phone. She never had much patience for John’s childish superstitions. 

John shook himself. He was happy. He had a plan. Something he was excited about. He wasn’t going to let this one phone call ruin it.


	14. Just Because

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John gets ready to go out with May, remembers singing Just Because to Paul, and makes plans for his new cover record

While May was on the phone, John headed for the bathroom, leaving the door open so he could still hear the last song on the anniversary-gift record. Before he could put on the clothes May had picked out, he’d need a shower and a shave. The last song, Lloyd Price’s Just Because, had been included by Paul in memory of a stupidly romantic gesture of John’s the night Paul had moved into the Asher’s house. 

It had caused quite a row between them, in the studio after George and Ringo and the others had gone. John had wanted Paul to stay in the apartment Brian had arranged for them. 

Paul had argued. “But you’re not. You’re all fixed up cozy with Cyn and the baby. I don’t see why I--”

“Cyn is different!”

“I don--”

“Don’t think I would be with Cyn if I didn’t have to. If it weren’t for the baby we’d--”

“I dunno, John, you didn’t have to be with her in the first place. And with her you were.”

“That’s not fair, Paul. I started with Cyn long before I knew I had a chance with you. Before you were even of age.”

Paul sighed, shifted his feet. 

John fumed. Just as angry at the fact that they were fighting as he was at Paul. This argument was so repetitive. John’s possessiveness of Paul always rebounding with the fact of his marriage to Cynthia. “I just want . . .” John would not let himself sound like the pleading child he was. “Why don’t you--” He cut himself off again, still not landing on the right words. “If you’re living there. With that family. That proper, posh, family. With her. It’s going to be harder for us to be together. Don’t you--”

“My life doesn’t revolve completely around you, John. You’ve got Cynthia and Julian. Let me have Jane and the Ashers.”

“I told you, I don’t want them, I want you. Only you.”

Paul averted his gaze, uncomfortable as usual with moments like these, almost scared of the immensity of John's love. “I’ve got my reasons,” he said to a mic stand. “I’ve got a lot of reasons you don’t know for wanting this. And I’m going to make my relationship with Jane public. As public as possible, really.” 

John’s face burned and his head pounded. He pushed over a music stand. A public relationship. Exactly what Paul knew John fantasized about. But Paul was doing it with Jane. With this silver-spoon actress John knew very well Paul did not love. It was some sick punishment Paul had concocted. Some revenge plot for every stupid thing John had done to him. And John knew it was a long list. He had it coming. He deserved it. 

“Look, John. I’m leaving. I’ve got to unpack and then the Ashers have invited me to some opera tonight.”

Some opera. Paul was trying to sound casual, like he didn’t care, like he’d rather not go. But John knew Paul loved that shit. “Go then,” John shrugged. “What do I care?”

Paul slung his hoffner over his shoulder and strode out of the room, shaking his head. 

So that was what it was about. Paul always had been a bit of a social climber. Had loved Mimi’s posh accent and her Chaucer collection. Now, the Ashers, with their blue blood and their college degrees, their rembrandts and their fine crystal, were offering him more. How could he say no?

It took John several hours of brooding, an ignored phone call from Paul, three cigarettes, four or five glasses of whiskey, both sides of GI Blues, and a soft suggestion from Cynthia that maybe he should call Paul back, to realize he’d been wrong to try to insist Paul move in with George and Ringo. He cursed his own jealous heart and got a cab. He didn’t know what he was going to say or do, but he told himself for once in his life, he was going to apologize. 

By the time the cab pulled up at the front entrance to The Royal Albert Hall, a light rain had started. “An umbrella, Mr. Lennon,” offered the driver.

But John was already out the door and headed for the ornate, domed victorian building.  
A doorman stood under an intricately carved awning, keeping out of the drizzle. He blinked in surprise when he saw John, his Beatle cut dampened and his eyes darting. “Are you one of them?” he asked.

John nodded. “Yes, I’m John. I was supposed to meet Paul here, Paul McCartney. He was going to the opera with the Asher family. Have you seen him?”

The doorman scratched his greying mustache. “Why no, sir, I am afraid you are the only Beatle I have seen in my life. I wonder, could I--”

John dashed back into the rain to avoid signing an autograph or perhaps the humiliation of a grown stranger asking to touch his hair. He started off walking in the direction of the Asher’s house on Wimpole Street, but he only had a vague idea of how to get there or how long it would take, plus the rain was starting to pick up and he could already feel his socks starting to soak up water. He hailed another cab and told the driver the address. The driver wouldn’t start the car until John had signed an autograph for his daughter. John ground his teeth. The fame was getting too big for him. Soon he’d have to stop taking cabs altogether. Hire a driver, or get his own fucking license and be a grown up. Well, he’d deal with that later. 

Why hadn’t Paul gone to the opera? Had the Ashers decided to cancel? The thought wasn’t a happy one. What if he showed up and they were all sitting down to drinks and cozy family games? Or worse. What if he came in and someone informed him that Paul was upstairs with Jane? John clenched his fists and shoved his hands deep in his pockets. He shook his head. No, it was pointless to keep torturing himself with these scenarios. Getting himself all worked up when he was supposed to be thinking up an apology. But what would he say, especially with all of them there?

When the cab stopped at number fifty-seven, John sighed in relief. All the lights in the house were out but one, glowing from a tiny attic window in the top corner of the house. His gut told him the light came from Paul. He was in luck. He paid the cab driver, who griped at him for not tipping him enough since he was a millionaire after all, then he stepped under the Ashers’ awning and rang their doorbell. Nothing. He’d expected a butler of some kind. But maybe the Ashers were too modern for live-in servants. He sighed, tilted his head back, and looked up at the little yellow window. A few flecks of rain flew under the awning in the wind and spattered across his face. From the window floated out a plunking jazz piano. Yes, that was Paul. John leaned against a white pillar and listened. This was something new. John hadn’t heard it before. He liked it. Up in the attic room, Paul played the short tune again, tried to move forward with it, then apparently disliking the addition, swiped his hands across the keyboard in frustration. A small smile crept onto John’s face, as he was sure he could picture Paul’s exact expression now. Chewing on his finger, eyes looking through the black and white keys, entirely focused on the song he was hearing in his head but couldn’t quite play with his fingers yet. 

The piano came to life again, and this time John recognized exactly what Paul was playing. It was the rock and roll piano part from Lloyd Price’s Just Because. The light, bouncing chords matched perfectly with the drops of rain plinking steadily into the puddles of Wimpole Street. John wanted to sing along with it, with the rain, with Paul’s fingers, with the piano. And he did. So what if people heard him? They wouldn’t jump to any kind of queer conclusions. What could be more natural than John Lennon singing along to Paul McCartney’s piano? For all the strangers in the street knew, this was just the strange way that the Lennon/McCartney songwriting partnership functioned. 

And so, he belted out the first lines, “Just because you left and said goodbye,” and to his surprise, Paul’s only reaction was to keep playing, but louder. So he kept going. “Do you think that I will sit and cry?” Paul was pounding now. “Even if my heart should tell me so,” John screamed, rain falling into his mouth, as he walked to stand directly under the window. “Darling I would never,” he changed the lyrics, “let you go.”

That switched word got Paul. The piano stopped. The window pushed open. Paul leaned out into the rain. “It’s supposed to say I would rather, John, not I would never.”

John shrugged.

Paul stared down at him. “It’s raining,” he observed, sticking a hand out.

John shrugged again. He knew this was when he was supposed to apologize, but he couldn’t seem to open his mouth.

Paul scratched his head. “Hold on, Lennon. I’ll be down in a mo’ to let you in.”

The song faded a bit under the sound of John’s buzzing electric razor. As he looked in the mirror and moved the razor over the three-day-old stubble, John tried to feed himself positive thoughts. Tried to ignore the tired circles under his eyes and the greasiness of his long hair. He had a strong face, he told himself. It was the face of someone who could make things happen. The boy who had started the quarrymen, who had convinced Paul he was good enough to quit his job coiling wires, who had rallied the others until they’d reached the toppermost of the poppermost was in there. There in the sharp eyes and the strong jaw. That was a man who could get what he wanted. He could do it. He’d get Phil Spector to produce it, make it authentically rock and roll. It would be an unmissable gift just for Paul, and Paul would come back to him.

John turned the razor off and Lloyd Price’s last words, “Maybe I am asking for too much, but darling please don’t ever break my heart,” rang out. He smiled to himself as he turned on the shower. It was almost too perfect. As if, somehow, back in 1967, Paul had known John would need this record to get him back. John shook his head. Always making up mystical things. No. In sixty-seven, neither of them could have dreamed of life without the other. Even in public interviews, they were both daydreaming about writing together as old men. 

John had just stepped under the warm water when May came bursting in. “John, John,” she said breathlessly. 

John ripped back the curtain, sure something must be wrong. Was Yoko in trouble?

But May was beaming. “It was Paul.”

“It was Paul?”

May nodded. “I told him you were in the shower, but he says he wants to talk to you whenever you have the time.”

“What does he want?” John asked, his terseness a perfect cover as always for his thudding heart.

“I think he wants to record with you again.”


End file.
